Investing.com - Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) fell in after-hours trading Thursday as investors digested strong fourth-quarter results tempered by uninspiring first-quarter guidance and a slump in the growth of subscription services, which includes its popular Prime service.
Shares fell 0.7% postmarket.
Amazon reported earnings per share of $6.04 on revenue of $72.38 billion for its fourth quarter. Analysts polled by Investing.com expected EPS of $5.64 on revenue of $71.87 billion.
But Amazon said it sees first-quarter sales of $56 billion to $60 billion, just below forecasts of $61.04 billion.
In addition it said fourth-quarter subscription services revenue, which includes its Prime delivery and Prime Video offerings, rose 26% year over year, excluding the impact of foreign exchange, well below recent trends.
Subscription services revenue grew more than 50% from the year-ago period in the first three quarter of 2018.
The e-commerce giant predicted operating income $2.3 billion to $3.3 billion in the first quarter, in line but on the low side of estimates for $3 billion.
The solid earnings but cautious revenue guidance is becoming a bit of a habit for the company. This is the third quarter in a row its revenue guidance has been below consensus.
For the fourth quarter, net sales in North America, its biggest market, jumped 18.3% to $44.12 billion.
Revenue in its Amazon Web Services cloud business surged 45.3% to $7.43 billion to beat estimate of $7.26 billion. Competitor Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) reported Wednesday that revenue in its cloud-computing business Azure rose 76% in its latest quarter.
-- Reuters contributed to this report.